Education is Big on State Ballots

By Desa Philadelphia

While Bush and Gore promote a more activist role in education, it remains overwhelmingly a state and local responsibility--and hot topic of state ballot initiatives and referendums. Here are some of the 32 proposals facing voters in 18 states next Tuesday:

VOUCHERS

--Michigan and California will decide whether to use public money to allow students to attend private schools. In the largest such effort to date, all of California's school-age children would eventually be eligible for the program. Michigan would require teacher testing for schools redeeming vouchers.

FUNDING

--New Mexico, Rhode Island, North Carolina and California ballot measures would make it easier to issue bonds to fund repairs and construction at schools and colleges.

--A South Dakota measure would allow the state to invest the education trust fund in the stock market.

--An Oklahoma referendum would let the state dip into the principal of its education trust fund to supplement the income generated by the fund.

--A Colorado initiative seeks to increase per-student spending on education by the rate of inflation plus 1% for the next 10 years and at the rate of inflation thereafter. The state would also use at least $50 billion in surplus revenue for the next five years to fund new math and science programs at public schools.

--South Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas and Colorado seek to direct taxes on gambling and lotteries to benefit schools.

--An Idaho measure would give the state more flexibility in using money generated by the sale of land owned by its school endowment.

BILINGUAL EDUCATION

--An Arizona initiative would repeal bilingual-education programs and replace them with intensive English classes for students who don't speak English.

--A Utah measure would make English the state's official language and encourage non-English speakers to "learn to read, write and understand English as quickly as possible."

TEACHER PAY

--In Washington an initiative would give the state's teachers and other education employees annual cost of living raises.

--An Oregon measure would tie teacher pay to student learning, eliminating raises based solely on seniority.

OTHER

--An Oregon initiative would ban any teaching that "promotes" homosexuality or bisexuality in state-funded schools, colleges or prisons.

--Under a Georgia referendum, teachers and other school employees and their families would receive payments, as police already do, if they are "killed of permanently disabled by an act of violence in the line of duty."

--An initiative in Washington would make it the 37th state to provide public funds to start charter schools.